5 questions for the White House on Bowe Bergdahl

President Barack Obama’s decision to swap long-missing Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay has unleashed a fusillade of criticism from lawmakers, who have blasted the president’s move as both reckless and lawless.

For the White House, it means answering uncomfortable questions about why Congress wasn’t told of the deal before it happened — as federal law demands — and what went into the administration’s media strategy, including fresh scrutiny of comments National Security Adviser Susan Rice made on a Sunday morning talk show.

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The president on Tuesday defended his administration’s efforts to rescue Bergdahl from captivity.

“Regardless of the circumstances, whatever those circumstances may turn out to be, we still get an American soldier back if he’s held in captivity. Period. Full stop. We don’t condition that,” he said in Warsaw, on the first leg of this week’s European trip.

His arguments are unlikely to put the questions to rest. There are worries about the deal and the precedent it could set for others in U.S. custody as well as other American service members who could be captured in the future. And the future of Sgt. Bergdahl is anything but certain.

Here’s a look at some of the key questions about the Bergdahl-Taliban trade:

Bigger than Benghazi?

The prison swap is showing signs of becoming a major flashpoint with the staying power, at least within conservative circles, of Benghazi.

Republicans see the prisoner swap as representing all that is wrong with Obama, a go-it-alone president who negotiates with bad foreign actors and flouts the rule of law to achieve his own ends.

Conservatives are also combing through the statements of Bergdahl’s father to cast him as unpatriotic — and his son has been tagged as a deserter by some of his fellow soldiers.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) raised doubts Monday that Bergdahl was even in grave health — the reason provided by administration officials as to why they couldn’t abide by the 30-day notification requirement.

“There’s no indication of that other than what the president says,” Chambliss said, “and I don’t believe a thing this president says now.”

The president’s move to defy Congress also fuels Republican assertions that Obama is guilty of hypocrisy for railing against a raft of signing statements President George W. Bush issued disclaiming his duty to enforce aspects of legislation he considered unconstitutional.

One former administration official said that when Obama issued signing statements in recent years saying he might “interpret” the law to make sure he had flexibility to transfer detainees “swiftly,” he was intentionally preserving his right to act in circumstances like the Bergdahl swap.

“The signing statement was put in for this exact thing,” said one former official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s the strongest conceivable example of a commander-in-chief exercising his authority.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday that Obama had never foresworn signing statements entirely, but simply argued that Bush over-relied on them.

“It’s often misreported that [Obama] somehow took a position against all signing statements, which was never the case,” Carney said. “He made clear that there were times when it would be appropriate, but that the authority to issue signing statements should not be overused or abused, and that a president should exercise restraint. And I think if you look at his record in office — now five and a half years in office you’ll see that restraint demonstrated.”

What did Congress know and when did it know it?

Over the weekend the administration seemed to flaunt the fact that they had not complied with legislation requiring the president to give Congress 30-days notice before transferring prisoners out of Guantanamo. In a statement issued Saturday night, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said he had just notified Congress of the transfer. In fact, the formal notification did not take place until Monday, congressional officials said.

White House aides are now stressing that they had earlier briefed Congress on the outlines of a possible swap.

“We have been consulting with members of Congress about this effort, including the potential transfer of five Gitmo detainees, for years. I know this because I participated in many of those consultations myself when I served on the staff of the National Security Council. So, this should not have been a surprise to any of the members of Congress who have been…commenting about it,” White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said Monday at a Center for Strategic and International Studies symposium.